But for the Democratic party elite, representing the wealthy and privileged has always been more important than representing Democratic voters.

Democratic voters, when anyone bothers to ask them, lopsidedly favor a more even-handed policy toward the aspirations of Palestinians. But among old and new faces in Democratic party leadership, from wannabe presidential nominees like Clinton, Obama and Biden to shot callers in the House and Senate, not a one opposed Israel's merciless bombing of Lebanon earlier this year, the construction of its apartheid wall, or its current shelling and slow starvation of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza.

If a change is gonna come, it will not be from leaders like these. A good start would be for antiwar Democrats, for impeachment Democrats, for count-every-vote Democrats and post.Katrina Democrats, if there are any, to refuse to sit down, to refuse to shut up. It's time to refuse to accept the statesmanlike demurrals and reaching "across the aisle" nonsense of the Clintons and Obamas and others.

It's time to get and to stay in the faces of Democratic party leaders and aggressively fight for peace, for justice, for the right of New Orleans and Gulf Coast residents to return, rebuild and remain, for the double impeachment Cheney AND Bush, for an end to the war, for a "small d" democratic media and for the right to be heard.

The Democratic party may have won the election this week. But Democratic voters now must confront their supposed leaders, and get ready for the real fight.

"America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception.

"Mass-market nostalgia gets you hopped up for a past that never existed. Hagiography sanctifies shuck-and-jive politicians and reinvents their expedient gestures as moments of great moral weight. Our continuing narrative line is blurred past truth and hindsight. Only a reckless verisimilitude can set that line straight."